I've been hearing this refrain all week: "Who cares who the next pope is?" I figure that those who don't care who the next pope is probably don't care much about world politics either. I'm writer who has written about 60,000 words on Roman Catholicism in the past three years...

Could New York's cardinal wind up as the next pope? As a Catholic who has been watching Dolan closely over the past few years, I suppose I would not be entirely surprised by such move -- a strategy for hauling American Catholics back into good grace -- so to speak....

Roman Catholic writer Andrew Sullivan has suggested the pope is gay. The pope's companion will follow him to the refurbished convent behind St. Peter's where Joseph Ratzinger will live out his years. Perhaps this explains in part the contempt the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has showed for LGBT...

Since Joseph Ratzinger announced he would retire, the Catholic opinions have been flying. Everyone who has an opinion about his resignation agrees that Ratzinger's decision constitutes a dramatic break from tradition. Conventionally devout Roman Catholics are satisfied with the old age/pacemaker/Mexican fall/infirmity explanation, but this resignation flies in the face...

Why did Pope Benedict XVI announce his resignation Monday? I'd like to imagine he took a sweeping look at his career as a priest and prelate, and while not discounting the value of this contributions as an intellectual, took note of the degree to which he, during the course of...

Unimpeded by Yuletide spirit, Mary complained each year
of the hundred Christmas cards from people expecting
replies. Too old at 90, she was, at last, at last,
too old to shop, too old to burrow, blue head tucked
down through the mob crammed on the bus...

for Maureen Mullen

I remember your advent
assumed the rounded shape hope
has, how the arching

patch of whiteness you incorporated
indicated the gleam an apple boasts
nesting in folds

in a work you called "Anticipating"
which might have been...

We are Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, but on this question we are united in faith and in action. We urge our fellow Catholics, and indeed all people of good will, to join with us in this full-hearted effort to elect Governor Mitt Romney as the next President of the United...

I recently posted a piece about the not quite kosher alliance between the disgraced Democratic party kingmaker Vito Lopez and Nicholas DiMarzio, the bishop in charge of the Brooklyn-Queens Roman Catholic Diocese, in the "New York" section of the Huffington Post. It's a local politics story, but, there is an...

I'd sure hate to be the anti-LGBT, anti-woman tantrum-prone cardinal following the sage, rabbinic and serenely exuberant Sister Simone Campbell at the Democratic National Convention. But Timothy Dolan -- who is, by the way, not "America's pope" (as the papist fringe likes to call him) -- did just that.

I've been hearing a lot about why we should stop formally commemorating September 11, 2001. I don't think we should stop. Certainly, we should evolve. Distance should modify how we view that day, but there is still much to be gained by looking back at the day. For many children...

Last week's story of the Timothy Cardinal Dolan and the two conventions was a wee bit difficult to follow. On Aug. 24, The New York Post reported the following:

President Obama turned down a chance to have Timothy Cardinal Dolan deliver a prayer at the Democratic National...

I wasn't surprised to read this morning that the conduct of Democratic power broker Assemblyman Vito Lopez has finally landed him in hot water. I have been paying careful attention to Lopez, mostly in the context of his alliance with the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and...

About four years ago I caught the last 20 minutes of the 2008 Alfred E. Smith dinner on CSPAN. Senator Barack Obama's bit was funny, and his comedic timing was impeccable. But I found myself distracted from full enjoyment of the future president's performance by the man...

About three months ago I was chatting with a New York City nun after mass about the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) crackdown on nuns. "It will backfire," Sister said. "The LCWR (Leadership Conference of Women Religious) won't back down," she chuckled.

Sister was laughing not...

In his July 15th piece in the New York Times, "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" Ross Douthat argues that (what he calls) "liberal Christianity" is on the decline. I think the opposite may be true. "Liberal Christianity" may even be flourishing, in an evolved state, helped along --...

I wrote a "thank you" note to an eighth grade teacher on the morning of the last day of school this week. The teacher is a bit of a wise-ass; he cracks a lot of jokes, most of them, I gather, funny. Is he everyone's idea of an excellent teacher?...

Two hundred and fifty Catholics, not much of crowd, assembled on the first day of "Fortnight for Freedom" at St. Patrick's Cathedral to hear New York's top priest, Timothy Dolan, celebrate Mass and reflect on religious liberty. "Fortnight for Freedom" is a two-week period designated by the USCCB...

I agonized a while over what I felt about the Child Victims Act New York Assemblywoman Marge Markey has been sponsoring for almost five years. Why wouldn't I, a teacher and mother of three, not leap with all possible alacrity to support legislation (against which the Roman Catholic...

Timothy Dolan has been curiously silent since the highly damning news that he may have paid pedophile priests in his (former) Milwaukee Archdiocese as much as $20,000 to go away broke on May 31. It's likely that Dolan, his advisors and his apologists are waiting for the reports to die...